High Five Recipes: Chicken Fried Steak Strips

I do almost all of the cooking around here…not because Matt can’t or won’t cook. I just really, really love to cook and have more time to be in our kitchen.

However, ever since Matt started working at a restaurant, he’s been quite a bit more interested in learning about food preparation…and guess what? My husband has a really great cooking tip for you today.

Yes indeed, this nugget of Chicken Fried Steak Strip wisdom is brought to you by the Heavenly Homemaker’s Husband! (Maybe you knew this tip already, but I didn’t.)

Here’s what he shared with me the last time I made these Chicken Fried Steak Strips:

If you keep dipping the meat in the flour and then in the milk and then back in the flour and then back in the milk and then back in the flour and then back in the…

It will make an extra yummy, extra crispy coating on the outside of the strip.

My strips were good, but I had just been single dipping. Following Matt’s advice, I am now double and even triple dipping. Now, they are Oh My Goodness Amazing. All thanks to my husband. I love that man. You will too after you try his double/triple dipping advice. But you can’t have him. He’s mine.

I haven’t made this with beef before, or for that matter, with chicken. LOL Byut I have made it with deer (venison) tenderloin, and it is soooooo good! We use buttermilk with a dash of hot sauce, but otherwise it’s made the same way. Oh, I pound the meat first. :-)

How do you keep these warm and crunchy while you prepare the rest of the batch? I am going to be making Chicken Fried Steaks for over 100 men for a Men’s Retreat in April and am looking for ways to keep them crunchy without having one side get soggy. Any ideas? Thanks

If you get/have a cookie cooling rack you can put it on a big rectangle pan and put the oven on low. When you are done cooking the CFS’s you can take them out of the pan and put them on the cooling rack. That way they can drip off any excess oil and they are not sitting in it while you cook the rest. It helps keep them nice and crunchy, and warm at the same time. :)

True story, at a Denny’s where I was a waitress, we introduced CFS to a new employee, she ate it and really liked it. Her comment about it was: “It was good, but didn’t taste anything like chicken!” LOL!

I’m going to make a ton of these. We just this morning picked up half a beef. Total price $1.42/lb for all cuts after processing because my Pappaw is a cattle buyer and got a bargain. I’m so proud of this deal! There were a bunch of packages of cube steak, too! Mmmm, can’t wait to try this recipe!

Question: I have a few roasts in the freezer, do you think I could cut them up, tenderize them, and use them this way? Sounds weird to sacrifice a roast, but it is pastured beef and tends to toughen up when roasted.

I made these tonight with venison cube steaks that we had tenderized. They were incredible! My husband said I could make these anytime!
For gravy, I just mixed my left-over milk and flour and then mixed that into the greasy leavings in the botton of my skillet. I added a little broth to thin it out and it was awesome!

The trick I found to smooth gravy is using the “wondra” flour. It
comes in a blue can and is ground finer. I am making for a large
family. I use one stick of butter…..get it bubbly over med. heat
and add flour a few shakes at a time until it looks nice an think..
I add about 3 T of cream and then milk….stirring constantly. I
can’t tell you how much milk, but I get a pretty full regular
family size skillet…..then I let it come to a boil (stirring) and
it thickens as I go. This flour is fine enough that I can add it to
the gravy at the end if it won’t thicken enough…..and it doesn’t
lump!

Salt, pepper, tri-color pepper corns, garlic (whatever I want for
flavor). If I am making it for chicken, I might had chicken
“granules” to the butter early on as well. If I have chicken
drippings or turkey drippings, I just add the butter to that.

I have been want Chicken fried steak for a while so tonight I made it. Normally, I do whole steaks for each of us (there is four of us) however, we had extra teenage kids in the house unexpectedly. So I did cut them into strips, I was surprised how much more it makes this way. Way more for you money especially since is over $4.00 lb for cubed steak.

Keeps the ideas going, I love this website. Still scared to make bread, have everything from hard white wheat to grinder.. any suggestions.

Hi Laura. I’ve been making these for over a year now but we can’t do dairy right now. I read the poster asking about making them with water. Have you tried that or any other “milks”? Thanks! These are one of my husbands favorite meals

Laura,
I probably sound really weird, but I bought a package of cube steaks last week, and then came home and didn’t like the recipe I was going to use them for (because it called for THREE different varieties of gravy mix and I didn’t want that). So I was wondering what I was going to use them for, and then this week you have chicken fried steaks on your menu plan! I am so excited to try this! :) Thanks, for the great menu plans. Does it ever bother you to realize that some of us are “plagiarizing” you, by copying some of your menu plans? ;)

These were excellent! Thanks Laura and Matt :D I just have a question! Do you dip and repeat with your fingers, or do you use a fork? B/c I had to keep making more flour mix b/c I was making it wet and doughy? Does that make sense? Also does anyone else have a problem with their strips falling apart when they are raw, and you are cutting them up? Thanks a bunch for any tips!

I love this recipe. Recently I’ve been trying to cut the family back to a healthier menu and your recipes are great for that :) Have you ever thought about the foods the Bible tells us to eat? I am trying to decide if we want to go to that level. Would you ever go that route?

Are you talking about the law of Moses? Like in the old testament?
We no longer have to live by the laws b/c the law is dead! Only faith
through Jesus Christ will save us! Of course we are suppose to not sin,
and not party, lie, fornicate things like that, but no one could
live up to the law. And if you break one law then you’ve broken them
all! If you’d like for me to go further and provide scripture please
feel free to write me at mrsofthemr@live.com

I’m so excited to try these! The problem I always have with cube steak is that its so tough and when I make chicken fried steak its hard to cut and chew. Anyone have any suggestions on how to tenderize it without a meat mallet?

What I do is actually cut the patty into thinner strips. It is a
little difficult to cut through the “strings”, but after you do that
and fry them up they are so much more tender! Just watch your cooking
time because it won’t take as long to cook! Also if your strips fall
apart while cutting them you can smoosh them back together like you
would a hamburger patty! I hope this helps you :)
God Bless!

Gals I am 70 years old and am still learning new tricks and tips for the kitchen. Where were all these ideas when I was a young homemaker? Oh yes, we didn’t have access to all this information.
Thanks young gals!

Hi! Love your freezing dinners that you make ahead of time. I do not cook seperate meals for that, I just make more than we can eat for the night and freeze the left overs in a homemade TV dinner, but it is just the 2 of us. I am disabled and some times cooking is really hard for me, so do it this way if there is a night that I am not able to cook…….just take out a TV dinner and we have supper.

When I make “chicken fried steak” or fried chicken I salt and pepper then dredge in flour, then buttermilk, then press into Panko bread crumbs. Makes crispy, tangy coating and the crispy bits are great in the gravy as well! Handle them gently with forks to try to keep the coating on.

I made this gluten free tonight. I started out with rice flour and double dipping. It was not working out too well. Too sticky and thick. I added corn starch to the rice flour and only did a single dip. PERFECT!